The terms of the UK’s future relationship with the EU have yet to be concluded and so there is inevitably a degree of uncertainty about what Brexit ultimately means for copyright in the UK. Recent developments in parliament mean the Brexit uncertainty is higher than ever. The future relationship will really only crystallise sometime after…
In law, perhaps one of the most famous aphorisms is “I know it when I see it”, which Justice Potter Stewart used to describe his threshold test for obscenity (in Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184 (1964)). The CJEU, in case C‑310/17, delivered a decision on copyright which in a way confirms this aphorism and…
On 13 November 2018, the CJEU clarified the scope of EU copyright law by excluding works of taste from copyright protection. This marks the end of a three-year long dispute, which arose in 2015 between two cheese producers and was based on the idea that the taste of a food product is copyright protected. In…
To ensure you don’t miss out on interesting IP law developments reported on our other IP blogs, we will, on a regular basis, provide you with an overview of the top 3 most-read posts from each of our IP law blogs. Here are the top posts from September, October and November. Top 3 Kluwer Copyright…
Website blocking injunction cases are complicated in Sweden because the Copyright Act requires contributory liability of the ISP, or in the case of interim injunctions – probable cause, for an injunction to be issued. While the reduced evidentiary burden for interim injunctions does not completely absolve a court from scrutinising the evidence, the legal context…
Since 1 April 2018, the Portability Regulation has prohibited geo-blocking of online content within the European Union under certain requirements. The regulation guarantees the unrestricted access to (paid) subscribed online content of all European citizens, regardless of where they are present in EU territory. The presence must be “temporary”. Providers of fee-based online content are…
Josef K. was minding his own business when one morning, even though he knew he had done nothing wrong, he was arrested. This was the beginning of his trial. In his masterpiece entitled The Trial, Franz Kafka tells, among many things, the story of a man trying to interact with a preposterous system of justice….
This article will be forthcoming in the March 2019 issue of Communications of the ACM, a computing professionals journal. The editors of Communications of the ACM have given permission for it to be pre-published for the Kluwer Copyright Blog. Should European press publishers be granted a new intellectual property (IP) right…
Whilst it is highly debatable whether the EU Withdrawal Agreement will get through the UK Parliament, the chances are that if any revised deal is struck later, the IP provisions will remain unchanged. (The Johnson brothers, and even Jacob Rees-Mogg are unlikely to be terribly exercised about matters such as the continued application post- 31…
The creation of works by artificial intelligence systems (AIS) challenges our perception of creativity and, with it, of eligibility for copyright protection. Examples abound. AIS can autonomously create paintings, literary works, music, or even artificial photos. Were these works created by a human being, their eligibility for copyright protection would not be controversial. However, it…
